over the Salton Sea, with the aircraft
shooting out of the tip of the phallus.
We should be offended by this obscene
blueprint, protest it, mapped in the unbolted
embrace of the sky, digitally drawn where
the subsonic goes supersonic, where the air
molecules make their bunched, bucking
complaints. We recognize that sound—what it could
mean—muffler, fireworks, gunshot. Whip.
We see how these men have amused themselves,
the way our sons did before we taught them
better. This is not breaking news. This is only
breaking women, again, who have seen dicks
pop up everywhere since birth, on whiteboards
in school, smudged by cleats in the early
morning dew on soccer fields, sprung
from zippers at parties by future judges. Face it,
with such common intrusion that suspends
in our space like aerosol, we can only do
as the firmament does, moment by moment:
Retain the right to gust and grow electric and strike.
The title is taken from the article https://www.thedailybeast.com/marine-pilots-investigated-for-drawing-penis-and-testicles-with-plane
Jen Karetnick’s fourth full-length book is The Burning Where Breath Used to Be (David Robert Books, September 2020). She is also the author of the forthcoming collection, Hunger Until It’s Pain (Salmon Poetry, spring 2023), and The Treasures That Prevail (Whitepoint Press, September 2016), finalist for the 2017 Poetry Society of Virginia Book Prize. In addition, she is the author of five poetry chapbooks, including The Crossing Over (March 2019), winner of the 2018 Split Rock Review Chapbook Competition. Her poems have been awarded the Hart Crane Memorial Prize, the Romeo Lemay Poetry Prize, the Anna Davidson Rosenberg Prize, and two Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Prizes, among others. Her work appears recently or is forthcoming in Barrow Street, The Comstock Review, december, Michigan Quarterly Review, Terrain, Under a Warm Green Linden, and elsewhere. Co-founder and managing editor of SWWIM Every Day, Jen is currently a Deering Estate Artist-in-Residence. Find her on Twitter @Kavetchnik and Instagram @JenKaretnick, or see jkaretnick.com.
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